John C.Rankin

   Throughout the Bible, Satan's agenda is to pervert political power so that it can subvert the Messianic promise. Accordingly, "sorcery at the right hand of power" reflects a reality where demonic counsel seeks access to political power in order shut down unalienable rights for all people equally, to shut down religious, political and economic liberty. Such liberty is uniquely the gift God, revealed fully in the Bible; wherever such liberty flourishes, the Gospel flourishes, and vice versa.

   For example, we see this with the Egyptian magicians counseling Pharaoh against Moses; Bala'am's counsel against Moses and Israel; the Sidonian witch Jezebel at the side of her Israelite husband King Ahab, as she sought to kill all the Hebrew prophets, especially Elijah; the Babylonian sorcerers in their counsel to Nebuchadnezzar, and in opposing Daniel; the Amalekite Haman in his attempt to have King Xerxes to kill the Jews, in opposing Mordecai and Esther; the enemies of Jesus behaving as children of the devil and "sons of hell" in their plots to kill Jesus; the sorcerer Elymas in his counsel to the governor of Cyprus, seeking to turn him away from the apostle Paul's preaching; and in the Book of Revelation, the spirit of Bala'am against the church at Pergamum, alongside the false prophetess Jezebel in the church at Thyatira.

This territory is addressed in The Six Pillars of Biblical Power, Volume III of First the Gospel, Then Politics… (Spiritual Territory), and in Jesus, in the Face of His Enemies.

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Light and Dark in St. Michael’s Chapel

   I was raised in the Unitarian-Universalist church, where I remember Sunday School teachers who were very skeptical of the Bible, even agnostic, and they taught me the same. To be skeptical is good, if in pursuit of the truth, but these skepticisms I was taught struck me as explaining away too much, or protesting too hard. So though I was a self-conscious agnostic in of the summer of 1967 at age fourteen, I had always been amazed by the universe and my own existence in it. Thus I became a skeptic of the skepticisms I was taught. That September I began ninth grade (“third form”) at South Kent School, a small boarding school for boys in the Housatonic highlands of western Connecticut. South Kent had a daily chapel schedule rooted in the Episcopal liturgy.

   Chapel was required, but I determined not to participate, saying to myself, “I don’t believe this stuff.” So I did not sing, recite, pray, genuflect or take communion. But that proved a “dangerous” thing to do. For while other students were participating, outwardly, at one level or another, I ended up occupying my mind reading the words of the liturgy and hymns, as they were recited and sung. I was interested in the possible existence of God.

   On November 1, I was standing outside the chapel in the interlude before walking down the hill to dinner. As the air pricked my spine, I felt alive. It was delightfully cold, and in those rural hills the Milky Way was exceptionally clear that evening – like a white paint stroke against a black canvas. I considered its awesome grandeur and beauty, and then I posed to myself this sequence of thought:

If there is a God, then he must have made all this for a purpose, and that purpose must include my existence, and it must include the reason I am asking this question. And if this is true, then I need to get plugged into him.

   I wanted to know either way, and I was convinced that if there were a God, then it would be most natural to become rooted in my origins. But I wanted verification. The “if” clauses were real.

   This was a commitment to myself, in the sight of the universe, in the sight of a possible God. It was in fact a prayer to an unknown God.

   One or several evenings later I was the first student into chapel, taking my assigned seating in the small balcony. As I sat down, and looked forward in the empty sanctuary, I said under my breath, “Good evening God.” Immediately I retorted to myself, “Wait a minute John. You don’t even know if there is a God. How can you say ‘good evening’ to him?”

   But also immediately I became aware of a reality that was prior to and deeper than the intellect, of a truth that held the answer to any and all of my questions. There was a God, I knew deep within me, and I knew that I had just lied to myself by saying I did not know, even though it was only now that I knew I knew. My heart knew before my mind knew, but as part of the whole that my mind was now grasping. I had yet to speak it (see Romans 10:9-10).

   In this moment, God’s presence ratified the reality of my belief as I simultaneously discerned a Presence literally hovering over me, filling the entire balcony. And critically, this Presence was hovering and waiting for my response. It was a powerful, warm inviting and embracing cloud. This all happened within a moment’s time, and I realized that I did believe. No sooner had I exhaled my agnostic retort, did I then inhale and say, “Yes I do (believe).” As I did, this literal presence of God descended upon and filled my entire being – heart, soul, mind and body.

   Now I knew nothing at the time of the divine name and nature of Yahweh’s presence and glory, as experienced by the Israelites in the exodus community with the tabernacle, and later in Solomon’s temple. Nor of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Yet the grace of God came into my life that November evening, as he but gently crossed my path with a touch of his presence. I asked an intellectual question in view of an awesome universe, and was answered by the presence of the awesome Creator. Light came into darkness. In remarkable contrast, I had an experience in that same chapel four-and-a-half years later, in the spring of 1972 (I enjoyed the third form so much I took it twice). The chapel’s name, interestingly, is St. Michael’s, named after the warring angel who defeats Satan in Revelation 12:7-9.

   I was up late one evening in the dining room of the Old Building doing some work when a friend burst in, horrified, on me and several other seniors. He described to us in halting breaths how he had been waiting in the chapel for another friend to finish some work in the adjacent library. As he was, the communion bells rang out three times from the balcony. Thinking he was being spoofed by someone, he called out for the prankster to reveal himself. Silence. So he climbed the wooden stairs to the balcony, searched it, and nobody was there. There was no place to hide apart from where he searched, no other stairs, and all footsteps in that small chapel were most audible. A sense of abiding and evil darkness overtook him, and he fled in horror down the hill to the Old Building.

   I was the only one of the several seniors there who took him seriously (or was willing to admit it). In my young faith, I believed there was nothing to fear, so I suggested we return to the chapel and investigate. It was just past midnight, and as we came within 20-30 feet of the chapel, we both looked into the windows. What we saw was a darkness that was blacker than black against the diffused light of nearby buildings, pulsating, alive, extraordinarily evil and very angry at our presence. Another step and we stopped, having come against a terribly tangible but invisible wall of air that was thicker than thick, impenetrable and driving us back. All my critical faculties were alert, and the experience was as real as anything I have known with the five senses. My friend and I turned and fled. I prayed until 4:00 a.m., trying to understand it.

   One clue to what was happening is that the “witching hour” is known to happen from midnight to 3:00 a.m., when covens of witches (sometimes including warlocks), those into the deepest witchcraft, regularly meet to do their rituals and to curse their enemies, especially Christians. They prefer certain days and seasons on their pagan calendars, related ultimately to astrological factors. This evil presence was gathering just before midnight when my friend was initially spoofed, and it may have been proximate to May Day, one such pagan holiday – but at the time I did not know to consider this element. As well, the Housatonic Highlands of western Connecticut and the adjoining Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts are well-known for concentrations of such activity.

   I was blown away by the experience at the time. The very chapel where the supernatural presence of Yahweh descended on me in 1967 was the very chapel where this demonic presence bearing the mark of Satan himself assaulted my friend and me in 1972. The contest of the darkness seeking to displace the Light.

Witchcraft in the Midst of Massachusetts Politics

   In 1988, as the head of a New England wide evangelical pro-life ministry, I conceived of and led a statewide non-binding public policy petition drive in Massachusetts: “In biological terms, when does an individual human life begin?” We provided four possible answers: a) conception, b) viability, c) birth, or d) a write-in option for voters to identify a different biological point. It was kept off the ballot by the Attorney General, a former board member of Planned Parenthood, and deeply opposed by Planned Parenthood, the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and the Boston chapter of the National Organization for Women – working in conjunction. Our research showed that at least 80 percent of the voters were likely to say “conception.” This would have been devastating to the abortion-rights movement – establishing an accurate definition of terms by means of informed choice, and upending the rationale of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision legalizing human abortion. Had we done one simple legal step, we would have prevailed, but that is the nature of the devil, to find our weak points and exploit them.

   We slowly gained a perspective that there was more than meets the eye – a wall of witchcraft behind the scenes. Beginning in June of 1989, we began a presence at New England’s largest abortion center, Preterm, on Beacon Street in Brookline, adjacent to Boston. There were two other abortion centers on Beacon Street nearby, Repro and Planned Parenthood, and we were occasionally at Repro as well. In about two years worth of Saturdays, we saw 200 or more women walk away from their abortion appointments by their own choices, many to go to Crisis Pregnancy Centers, and some also found Christ. We had a presence in worship and conversation with abortion rights activists. Our signs had intelligent and non-accusatory questions that caused many people to do some real thinking. Our large banner said, “You have the power to choose life,” and those seven words alone turned many women away from planned abortions.

   We were consistently opposed by people, especially women, publicly cursing us in open allegiance to witchcraft. I happened once to converse with a woman in such a context who, upon learning that I had organized the statewide pro-life referendum, claimed that she and others in the Boston chapter of NOW had reviewed all our petitions and found many forgeries. Now it turns out that Boston NOW and others, had been contacted by someone within the government, moments after we turned in our signatures. The theme of sorcery at the right hand of power? In fact, we had the highest percentage of ratified signatures in state history according to one member of the Secretary of State’s office. I asked the woman why, if there were so many forgeries, was there never even one challenge mounted against one signature? She did not answer.

   One remarkable series of events marked this whole season. On August 9, I was up late one evening (just before midnight), finishing some work. I was usually in bed much earlier. I was sitting at the kitchen table, leaned back in my chair and went into prayer. As I did, I had a clear and strong vision. In it I saw a room with crudely fastened bookshelves against a wall to the right. It was laden with books of an occultic nature, along with some cognate paraphernalia. Two windows with sheer curtains were to its left, straight ahead, overlooking a busy city street. I got the sense it was a second or third floor apartment in a neighborhood near Boston University (BU).

   At a table in front of the windows, four women were seated. My perspective had me gazing over the shoulders of three of them from the near corner of the table. There was one woman to my left at one end, next to a window to her left, with the right side of her profile discernable but not distinguishable. Two women were seated next to each other to my right, their backs toward me, facing the windows. I saw the face of the fourth woman, who was seated at the end of the table closest to the bookshelves. I recognized having seen her among the abortion-rights protestors at Preterm, led by the Boston chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

   On the table was a crude straw figure with about 35 needles stuck into it. As I looked at the figure, the Lord spoke to me and said that the straw figure had been designed to represent me, and that these women were trying to work voodoo curses against me. I also had the sense they were amateurs at voodoo, but trying hard nonetheless, opening themselves up to whatever spiritual powers were necessary to succeed in disarming our Christian pro-life witness at Preterm.

   The Lord then told me: “Command the needles to explode outward.” I was surprised by the word “explode,” and immediately rejoined that I was sure the Lord did not intend for the “exploding” needles to hurt any of the women. Being thus assured, I then commanded the needles “to explode outward in the name of Jesus.” As I did, I saw the needles pop out of the straw figure and fall onto the table – as the vision was an ongoing event like watching a live television report.

   As the needles popped out, the four women fell back in their chairs, knowing that this was the power of the Lord at work through my prayers. In other words, they were somehow aware that I was praying at that exact moment, and that the power of the God of the Bible was manifest in response to my prayers. The falling back of the women was as if they were struck by a powerful blast of wind.

   That was the end of the vision, and I sat there amazed and surprised, not knowing fully what to make of it, still processing the images that had been placed before my mind’s eye. The vision was clear and real, but as always, I do not fully trust anything like this without testing it and seeing clear signs of confirmation. So I put it this vision on the “back burner” and went about my life and work.

   Over the next week and a half, I found myself interrupted four or five times, at various times and places, with the Lord telling me to pray – for at that given moment one or several of these women, perhaps at times with others, were cursing me again. Usually a brief prayer was sufficient, but once while driving home in the middle of the day, I was impressed to pray for some twenty minutes.

   On the evening of August 18, a Friday, I was preparing some new signs for the next morning’s presence at Preterm. When I was done, I looked at my watch – exactly 12:01 a.m. Then, again, the same vision of August 9 returned, exactly the same in all details and outcome, and I understood that these four women were repeating the attempted voodoo curses again, at that very moment.

   After I rebuked the curses in prayer, I was immediately flooded with a remarkable sense of God’s presence and peace, went to bed and slept wonderfully. In my prior trips to Preterm I had slept poorly the prior nights, filled with anxieties and uncertainties. I needed to be up at 5:00 a.m., and instead of being exhausted, I awoke fully rested. God’s Spirit had touched me after the final rebuke of the voodoo, and a victory had been won in this spiritual warfare with demonic powers.

   The fruit was immediately evident. I had expected about 40 people from our Christian pro-life group to show up that Saturday, but we saw as many as 150 different supporters at some point between 7 a.m. and noon. Something had happened in the spiritual realms the night before. We had an average of 80 people at a given time, and the abortion-rights supporters were almost as many at a given time. Four of five people told me how “anointed” that morning was in terms of worship, sidewalk counseling with abortion-minded women, and our witness to the abortion-rights activists. That word “anointed” had never been used before or since at Preterm. At least seven women chose not to follow through with their abortion appointments, and only twenty or thirty women were observed going into Preterm that morning, compared with fifty or so on prior Saturdays. Our people found that the abortion-rights activists had an uncharacteristic openness in the many conversations that occurred, and as well, whereas in our prior times at Preterm we noted pubic displays of witchcraft against us, we saw none that morning.

   This was perhaps my first experience in “warfare prayer,” that is, praying for God to break demonic powers in the hearts and minds of people, who would otherwise resist the Gospel, and instead experience a level playing field to truly consider it.

Demons at the University of New Hampshire

   The following October I participated in a debate over abortion at the University of New Hampshire (UNH), with three advocates on both sides, and a packed auditorium of some 400 people.

   After the debate, off to the side of the podium area, I sought out a Methodist minister who represented the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR) – to follow-up with him on certain of the points we had debated. I had several students from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with me, who among about a dozen people nearby, formed into a circle of discussion. Many students were still milling around or in the process of leaving, so there was a substantial din of background noise in the auditorium.

   As I was speaking with the Methodist minister, I was interrupted by a woman who came in and stood to my left. She was an avowed pagan feminist who had questioned me from the floor during the debate format itself, and the question had led to her public embarrassment because she had misunderstood something I had said, that which the rest of the audience clearly understood. Now she was loaded for bear.

   In her intensity to try again to discredit me, she interrupted the conversation and told me, “Stop trying to force your religion on me.” I was momentarily incredulous, for the power of informed choice had been the cornerstone of my comments that evening. At that moment I was unprepared for such vehemence, so I merely responded at the ethical and intellectual level and said, “I am not forcing religion on anyone, only seeking to persuade people openly and honestly.”

   She gazed intently in response and declared, “Well, you know, my god is not your god!” At this point I gained the first glimmer that something other than intellectual or political debate was in view. A real spiritual chill, a temperature change, had been brought into the air, but before I had time to process what it meant. And without the time to process it, and being caught off guard, I sought to inject a little humor with understatement. I replied, “That’s obvious.” Then I continued, “Nonetheless, we both have freedom in a democratic society to try and persuade one another. You are free to try and persuade me, and I am free to try and persuade you.”

   Then, like an uncontrollable volcano rising from within her soul, she exclaimed, “Well, I don’t believe in democracy!” In a normal discourse, I would have followed up and asked if she were a Marxist, and I would have pressed her to see if she embraces any form of informed choice.

   But this was not a normal discourse. For as she spoke these words, a literal wind was released from her person, and it caused me and the other dozen or so people in the discussion circle to fall backward one or two feet, including the pagan woman herself. The Methodist minister looked at her with surprised disgust, turned away and left, and most everyone else also immediately turned away and left, in somewhat of a daze, thus ending the conversation. I did not know what to make of it, and as I drove back to Massachusetts that evening, I thought about little else.

   The next day, I called the several seminary students who were there with me, to gauge their discernment. They each noted the same phenomenon, of a wind being released from the woman’s person and driving us back. One student, now a Ph.D. in New Testament, said that his momentary judgment was that he had thrown his hands into the air, and fell back in a kind of automatic gesture of disbelief at her comment. But then he realized that those with him were also falling back simultaneously, and he knew he had not stepped back but was thrust back. He also noted that as soon as the words and wind came out of her, it were as though it came out against her will, and that there was “something” in her trying to take the words back and mute the reality of the wind.

   It were as though an indiscreet manifestation had been made by a demon in reaction to the Gospel, and in a manifestation it would rather have not made so publicly. I believe this public display showed the true nature of the contest for the bystanders, discredited the abortion-rights argument, and thus served the reality of Satan’s household being divided. The Methodist minister and others on the abortion-rights side of the issue wanted to distance themselves from her and this manifestation, as they turned away in disgust.

   A demon had been squirming within her all night, at the proclamation of the Gospel in the context of the abortion debate, in hatred of the biblical power of informed choice, in hatred of a level playing field for all ideas to be heard equally. Suddenly I grasped how powerful the Word of God is in the face of the devil, both ethically and at the phenomenological level. At UNH, I stepped on the tail of a demon, and then became markedly awakened to this reality.

Demonic Opposition to Ministry at Cornell University

   After the debate at UNH, I relayed its experience in a Thanksgiving newsletter. While at Cornell University in January, I met with a husband and wife team in campus ministry, whom we will call Joe and Sue.

   Sue was eager to speak with me. In the fall of 1988, she was awakened once at 3:00 a.m., being strangled at the throat by invisible hands, or claws. She cried out in terror, asking Joe to pray for her. After a period of prayer, the strangulation receded and ceased. There were repeated attacks in the ensuing months, each time at exactly 3:00 a.m., as she was awakened by a cacophony of “noise,” where “the whole room seemed alive and crawling with evil laughter, accusations, mockery.” Sometimes the attacks ceased with a short period of prayer, but at least once, Joe and Sue had to pray until dawn.

   This was new territory for them. A woman friend, who had experience as a third world missionary gave one piece of advice to Sue – namely, when the demon showed up again, to command it to “name itself.” So the next time it happened, Joe commanded the demon to name itself, and the whole room became still and quiet. Then Sue heard God’s voice in the most direct way she had ever experienced. His word came to her, through her mind but originating outside it. He said to her, “Its name is ‘the bold one.’ ” So she told this to Joe, and he said, “By the authority that the True Bold One, Jesus Christ, gives me, I command you to leave and not return.”

   As he did, she saw in her spirit the appearance of a “... huge lumbering demon in the upper right corner of the room. It seems jillions of smaller demons shot out of the room and the big one went out, snarling and fuming.” The peace of the Lord came over Joe and Sue and their home, they fell peacefully asleep, and never again experienced this demonic attack. These 3:00 a.m. attacks – sorcery at the right hand of power in an academic setting?

Who Moved the Stones?

   I ran into a remarkable series of events just prior and after we moved back to my native Connecticut in 1992. It began with a daytime vision.

   I saw an image of a spearhead, superimposed on a map of Connecticut, running from northwest to southeast, from the Berkshire Hills across the Massachusetts border, the width covering much territory including the capitol city of Hartford, and aiming toward New London on Long Island Sound. As I saw the vision, the Lord said one word: “Vacuum.” That was it, and the vision departed.

   Some weeks later, while driving on Route 8 just south of Winsted in the northwest hills, I noticed an intricate pillar of stones in the wide median strip, atop a large boulder. It was two or three feet high and involved dozens of stones. Throughout the Bible we see such “sacred stones” used by pagans to mark spiritual territory – to dedicate their lands and buildings to pagan deities that are believed to inhabit such locations. As well, we have examples such as Joshua 4, where the covenant community erected an altar of stones to commemorate an act of Yahweh Elohim in history.

   Two days later, six of us were hiking on a nearby hill, and were praying for revival in Connecticut, for justice and mercy in the name of Jesus to salt society. In one of my prayers, I asked the Lord if these were pagan stones in need of removal, due to their spiritual evil, and if so, would the Lord send his holy angels to tear them down?

   Three days later, on June 21 (the summer solstice, a high pagan holiday), they came down – with no human involvement to our knowledge. They had been up for years we had learned. It became our conviction in subsequent months that these stones were marking the spiritual territory of the Berkshire Hills for pagan devotion. At this point where Route 8 north changes from a divided to a single highway, it is where the topography clearly marks a “gateway” to the Berkshires. This pillar of stones was partially rebuilt several times subsequently, but kept coming down – again, without any human involvement on our part. The last time I drove past that spot, in 2008, the large boulder was barren, and a bush was growing high on its northwest side.

   In the fall of 1992 I concluded, in consultation with others, especially local pastors, that the vision of the spearhead represented the direction of curses by Native Americans as they were unjustly expelled from the state in the 1700s and 1800s, through broken treaties, violence and gambling debts attained oftentimes through manipulated drunkenness. Earlier in the year, when my wife and I were visiting the Barkhamsted Reservoir, and in a time of prayer, we were overcome with a sense of the need for the White Man to repent of his sins against the Native Americans. As the final Natives worked their way up the Farmington River, through the Berkshires and finally out to Michigan through the care of some Christian missionaries, many cursed the White Man’s God and government. The spearhead vision covers the state capitol, and aims where the Mashantucket-Pequot reservation now stands – a huge center of casino gambling, where a small number of people, a remnant with minority portions of Indian blood, now receive billions of dollars from gambling and related revenue.

   We believed too that the word “vacuum” reflected how such unrighteous acts by the White Man, who putatively knew the Gospel, against Native Americans, led to a vacating of a godly spirit in the land, allowing the devil access. Hence, as a vacuum cleaner removes all but the most stubborn dirt, being that of Christian influence, and as the gravity of a black hole keeps light from escaping, so too the Christian missionary effort had been held back in this area by the demonic gravity we allowed in to begin with. Near the land covered by the spearhead is Northampton, Massachusetts, where the First Great Awakening began in the 1730s with its powerful influence in shaping the Declaration of Independence, and within it is Enfield, Connecticut where the Second Great Awakening began a century later. Since the late 1800s, the spiritual vitality of evangelical Christianity in New England has suffered greatly, to the point of becoming the least evangelical and most skeptical corner of the nation.

The Visit of a Witch, and a Modest Prayer Meeting

   In the spring of 1993 I had opportunity to visit with a pastor in the southeastern portion of the state. He told me about a remarkable encounter he had recently by a witch who approached him after a worship service. She announced herself and said that in New London County there were three covens of witches assigned to curse every pastor who also resides there, and that there was at least one coven dedicated to curse every pastor statewide. She also said that the curses had three priorities; first that the pastor would fall into theological error; second, into financial ruin; and third, into sexual sin. She then left.

   I found this amazing. Since when do witches come into the open and announce their agendas? Since the devil is described as a lion on the prowl by the apostle Peter, it would seem that those in the occult would only risk open terrain a) if they were utterly confident in easy pickings, or b) if they were desperate for a meal. Was this public confrontation a sign of increased pluck on the part of occultists, believing Connecticut is in their control? Or was it a sign that they sensed a rumble under the templates of the culture that God’s Spirit was about to move, and this was an attempted bravado seeking to cover fear?

   That June, I also started a modest series of “warfare prayer” meetings at St. James Episcopal Church in Winsted. This term, used by C. Peter Wagner, in a book entitled the same, refers to the context of intercessory prayer relative to strategic demonic powers that seek ultimately to control cities and nations – just as Daniel encountered the “prince of Persia” and the “prince of Greece.” We prayed concerning the specific dynamics of Connecticut’s spiritual territory from the northwest hills, and that as the reactive curses of the spearhead were aimed from there at Hartford and down to New London County, we wanted to pray in the same direction. We prayed that a) demonic power would be broken, so that b) the blessings of religious, political and economic liberty for all people in the state would be manifest.

Slander, Stones and Intimidation by a Lawyer

   Let’s take the view of a secular skeptic for a moment. Can any of this be psycho-analyzed or reduced to mere coincidence? Is there anything of what I report that is not affirmed by rational thinking, discerning attitudes and eye-witnesses, usually multiple in nature?

   What followed in the ensuing years was again remarkable. An activist with Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) started tracking me. She got on my mailing list (incognito), and began to feed slander to quite a number of newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts – some worked with it, and some did not. The basic thrust was that I was a violent man due to our “warfare prayer” meetings, a clause taken deliberately out of spiritual vertical context and applied to human lateral context. In other words, in the “warfare prayer” meetings, we were praying for the Light to dispel the darkness of demonic power, whereas this slander was trying to say we were plotting violence against people with whom we might disagree politically. This slander had no substance to base its charges other than the deliberate misuse of spiritual language. Then, in this season, in-between truck loads while moving across town, someone erected a pillar of stones on a rock outcropping next to our new house. Checking in?

   The woman who was tracking me had attended a Mars Hill Forum I had addressed. The next day at the University of Connecticut, she addressed a meeting called “Keeping an Eye on the Radical Right” (though I make no such identification, as one newspaper writer noted). A friend of mine happened to see the poster just beforehand, and dropped in moments before she said, “But watch out for John Rankin. He is the most dangerous man in the state, for two reasons. First, because he is a Harvard graduate, and second, because he believes that through prayer he can kick the devil out of the state.” She was fearful of true prayer in the power and name of Jesus, though she has it wrong – I cannot do it, but the church as a unit can as it prays in the name and power of Jesus.

   Then in the midst of this I learned that a lawyer in Winsted was investigating our prayer meeting on the grounds that we might be plotting to “violate the civil rights” of people. And a newspaper reporter, working in conjunction with the lawyer (I later discerned), interviewed me about our prayer meeting and asked specifically if we “pray against people.” I said a clear no, yet at the end of the interview she said, “Now let me review some of the major points we covered, to be sure I understand you clearly. First, you are praying against people, right?”

   The agenda was clear, so I challenged her, every reporter from these other newspapers, and the lawyer head-on. As a result, the slander stopped, and has never come up again.

   When those stones came down in 1992, I believe the occultic powers in Connecticut were shaken. The occultists knew their spiritual power had been muted, and as soon as they fingered me, the campaign to take me down began. Sorcery at the right hand of power?

   This whole campaign of opposition and slander against me traces back to that event on June 21, 1992. If the matter of the stone pillar and related experiences I had in the context of spiritual warfare could all be written off as happenstance, as naturally explainable coincidences, then these questions remain: Why such a persistent reaction to it? Why not just put the stones back up and expect them to remain, absent natural opposition that could be identified as such? If prayer has no power, why go to the point of published slander and hiring an attorney to oppose a prayer meeting? And if the opposition were just political in nature, why would I be called “dangerous” because of my commitment to prayer and its opposition to the devil?

A Remarkable Demonic Assault

   In February of 2005, while returning home one night from teaching at New York Divinity School, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a devastating physical exhaustion.

   For the next six weeks I slept 12-14 hours a day, and was not able to be productive in my waking hours. As a result, my finances went from a healthy trajectory to a disaster, and our house eventually went into foreclosure, which we later escaped only by the skin of our teeth.

   In this time period, I was preparing to work on the Ministers Affirmation on Marriage. a document where I recruited 700 ministers and church leaders in Connecticut as signatories: "Yes to Man and Woman in Marriage: No to Same-Sex Marriage." In its 2003 publication in the Hartford Courant, and here again in 2005, no one in the state – media, same-sex marriage advocates, academics, politicians, activists, et al. – raised one public question about its content and nature. And Connecticut is the most educated state in the nation per capita, as well as the wealthiest and most skeptical.

   At the six-week mark, I had seriously been considering writing my will, and how to make provision for my family as life was ebbing away. One friend called me "the walking dead." Then, one day at my desk, suddenly it hit me. This exhaustion was not physical in origin, but demonic. And especially, in face of the work I was then seeking to accomplish. So I created an email group of some 70 men, and asked them to intercede in prayer for my deliverance.

   The next morning, when I awoke, the exhaustion was gone, my health and energy fully restored, and there has been no return of this exhaustion since. Sorcery at the right hand of power?

Reality

   Anyone who knows biblical reality, and how there are those who strive for the idolatry of self-serving political power across the millennia, knows the reality of sorcery at the right hand of power. It is by design meant to be hidden, but where the Light is believed and lived, it is exposed. Honest politics will displace dishonest politics, but only if the spiritual nature of the contest is known well. By living the six pillars of biblical power and honest politics, we who are believers in Jesus as the Messiah war against the devil and his demons in prayer. We do so in love for all people as equals in God’s sight, and for those who might consider themselves our human enemies, we especially desire for them the same unalienable rights we pursue.

   In order to successfully pursue the vision for the six pillars of honest politics, we need to be aware of the reality of sorcery at the right hand of power, and thus, we need to be a praying people, expecting the power of the Holy Spirit and agency of the holy angels.

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